Hidden True Crime - Beyond the Veil: The Many Extremes of Lori Vallow Daybell Part I

Episode Date: September 10, 2020

We pick up where we left off in the last episode with the impact of Lori’s family upbringing upon her personality dynamics and life decisions, exploring Lori’s propensity for the extremes in emotions, behaviors and beliefs. We ask: Does Lori have a personality disorder? Was she sexually abused? Is she a borderline personality disorder? Have her past traumas and family wounds contributed to her decision to murder her children? Join us for dinner tonight to find out. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Our Sponsors:* Check out Acorns: https://acorns.com/HIDDENTRUECRIME* Check out Acorns: https://acorns.com/HIDDENTRUECRIME* Check out Armoire and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://www.armoire.style* Check out Effecty and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://www.effecty.com* Check out Happy Mammoth and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://happymammoth.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/hidden-a-true-crime-podcast1836/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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See Dealer for Financing Details. Hidden, a true crime podcast. A forensic psychologist and a journalist explore the hidden motives behind unthinkable crimes while examining our deepest fears, the way. I'm just saying this is not a behavior of someone that sees Jesus Christ. It's not the behavior. Really? Have you ever seen Jesus Christ? So do you know what the future behavior would be if you had seen Jesus Christ? I know that when I have, I know that when I pray. I have a speech to do every day and he does protect me and he is protecting me and he will

protect me against this accusation as well. And we will both stand there with him and you tell me if I was lying or not, but we're both standing there with Jesus Christ. Okay. This is Lori Matthewis. And I'm Dr. John Matthias. And what you just heard was the recorded phone call between Melanie Gibb, Lori, and Chad, Melanie and Lori arguing over how you would act if you saw Jesus Christ, because Lori has seen Jesus Christ, according to Lori. And that will lead us into our theme for this podcast, which is extremism. But before we begin, we just want to thank everyone again for the positive reviews you've left us as well as sharing with your friends this podcast. It means so much. And we hope that you will keep sharing and keep letting us know your thoughts.

We love to hear from you. I also want to mention one of our listeners who wrote a comment about our podcast, Alison Christensen. Allison left a comment about the ending of our last podcast that meant a lot to me. And I'd like Lauren to read that. It says the advice at the end of this episode made me go about my day differently with my kids, and it always will. Thank you both for this most excellent podcast. When we started this podcast, I told Lauren that I really wanted this podcast to be about more than just crime.

Of course, we're going to talk about crime or crimes in depth, but my hope was to use crime as a platform to dig deeper into the human condition. And so when I hear Allison say that, I feel a tremendous sense of growth. gratitude. It means a lot to me that one of our listeners was impacted enough by the end of our podcast to take action in the world with their kids. I think that if we were to conclude this podcast today, my goal would have been accomplished in changing someone's life for the better, or at least how they interact with their children for the better. I think I'd also like to look ahead a little bit. We're in episode eight, and we probably anticipate concluding our first season.

Beyond the Vale after 12 episodes. We are starting to look forward to season two. We don't have a particular case in mind to cover at the moment. What have people suggested? You guys have actually written us some ideas. The Rodin family murder was one. The Menendez brothers. There was a case that Lauren I talked about at the beginning with Adam D's. And Israel Keys. Oh, they rhyme. We would love to hear from you guys about cases you'd like us to cover in the future. We're going to do some single episodes too. One of those I want to talk about the appeal of serial killers to women and why some women pursue and marry serial killers in jail. Another single episode that we'll be doing will be about the allure of crime to listeners.

And in that episode, I think it'll be very personal because I would like to talk about how I became so fascinated with crime myself. So if you have any thoughts about future episodes, you would like us to cover or crimes you would like us to cover. or crimes you would like us to cover, please go to our Facebook page and let us know. And that Facebook page is Hidden, a True Crime podcast or Facebook.com slash hidden true crime. A lot of the things we're going to be talking about today, including an email posted on Reddit that we're about to discuss, will be posted on this Facebook page. So if there's ever more information you want or additional resources you're looking for, always check our Facebook page and we will post there. You can also follow us on Instagram at Hidden True Crime and Twitter at Hidden Crime. Back to Melanie and Lori arguing about how one should act when Jesus Christ is around.

Lori believes firmly that she has seen Jesus Christ and she makes that very clear here. You can say it didn't happen to me now, but you didn't witness it. Not only that, she believes that Jesus Christ officiated their wedding. Yes, she does. let's go back a little bit. We need to discuss something that was posted on Reddit back in January. This was when the children were missing and the world was only beginning to learn about this bizarre case.

So someone, an anonymous someone, posted an email that they claimed was sent to them by a friend of Chad's. They posted it to Reddit so that everyone could be, quote, aware of what was going on, end quote. Back then, no one researching the case could take the email seriously and believe it was real because I spoke of, you know, portals and zombies and murders and scriptures used to justify the murders. Well, throughout the months, we've seen everything that this email has stated has been accurate so far. I'll post that email on our Facebook page so you can go check it out. There's one part of this email and it's clear to us. This is what Melanie and Lori are arguing over.

It's Jesus Christ officiating at Lori and Chad's supposed first wedding, a wedding while they were still married to their other spouses. I'm thinking, wow, how did they get Jesus Christ to officiate their wedding? True, you and I got Janice, a woman named Janice to officiate ours. Janice was an accountant who had a moonlighting gig as a wedding officiant. And we're just lucky that the day before our wedding, we found her on Thumbtack. If we had had a couple more days, maybe. We could have found Jesus Christ to officiate. We could have held out for Jesus to answer our thumb talk request.

Maybe we were just, we just had the wrong connections. Maybe we should have been in contact with Chad. We've always been very grateful for Janus, who officiated our elopement, a real elopement where we decided the day before to get married. Yeah, she was great. Do you need Jesus to officiate your wedding? I guess it validates your status as a deity. I guess that's what they're looking for.

This is a longer email than I. thought I'm trying to find that line about Jesus Christ being at their wedding. And actually, it wasn't Jesus Christ that married them. It was Jesus Christ who was witness. So he just came as a guest. He didn't even have anything else to do except just be there. Yeah, but he guaranteed the status of their marriage. That's true. By being present. A witness does do that. In the Mormon faith, a witness is actually a very important person in a wedding. It is to witness and confirm that it is a official. So when you say that Jesus is present at your wedding, you're obviously making a self-important statement about how significant you are, how holy and significant your marriage is. So this email states

that in November of 2018, together at this point, Chad and Lori, while their other spouses are alive and well, and they're married to other spouses, that they went and were sealed to each other in a temple where they traveled into another upper room and Moroni gave Lori to Chad. The Savior was there. Being sealed to each other in the temple means marriage. Sealed means you are sealed for eternity in LDS lingo. Moronai is a prophet in the Book of Mormon and it says that he gave Lori to Chad and the Savior was there. Never mind that they're probably both married to and sealed to their other spouses at this point.

But that didn't stop them from finding a secret room in the temple and performing their own secret illegal wedding, which also talk about hypocritical. They're using religion to justify their sins. To me, this is just confirmation of how extreme they were and the lengths to which they would go to show how important and special they were. And we'll be talking about those ideas throughout this podcast. We do want to say that this episode will have discussions about sexual. sexuality and sexual abuse. So let's pick up where we left off last week. We were talking about Lori Valo Debel and the idea of the empty self.

Psychologists sometimes also refer to that as the false self. I think today I'm going to switch over and start using the term false self because I think it's probably a more accurate description. What the false self is, as I explained last time, is essentially a self that is a reflection of parental needs. It's a self that's formed in the absence of the parent's inability to reflect back the child's own emotions and thoughts. Would it be like not having your own personality or knowing who you are? Yeah, I think the personality would be another accurate description of the self. So it's a personality that becomes a reflection of parental needs rather than a composite of that person's actual interests

and that person's needs. Wow. It's kind of hard to take that in when you have always known who you are to realize that some people just simply don't. One thing we didn't bring up last time that I think is important is in the custody paperwork that Steve Cope filed. He also mentions that Melanie Polowski. Melanie Polowski is Lori Vallow's niece, the daughter of Steve Cope and her mother, Stacy.

Stacey is Lori's older sister, now deceased. Steve Cope gained custody of Melanie, and Melanie, though later found her way back into the Cox family's life and became part of this cult from what we can tell. Here's a quote from Steve in the custody affidavit. Here's what Steve says about Melanie. At this time, Melanie is only six years old. Melanie has become the caretaker for her mother, believing that she is responsible for her mother. The effect is that in her mother's presence

and given her mother's demands, Melanie sacrifices her own childhood to caring for her mother. This is precisely the family dynamic that we discussed last week. And this is exactly the family dynamic that leads to the creation of a false self. So here, Stacey, who's anorexic and also diabetic, a type 1 diabetic, is letting her daughter tend to her needs. Admittedly, she's very sick. But typically, in that situation, you would find health care workers or friends or other people to meet your needs and to assist you rather than your daughter.

What Stacy's doing here, and Stacy is the eldest daughter in the Cox family, is she's leaning on Melanie for emotional and intellectual and psychological support. It's so blatant that Steve notices this and goes so far as to report this to the courts as something that he believes is unacceptable for her normal development. What's interesting about this dynamic to me is the fact that now you see this pattern repeating. through the generations. Right. Here we have the granddaughter of Barry and Janice now becoming the caretaker, just as their kids were their caretakers at some level,

because Barry was so dominant. Now you have Melanie repeating this pattern. In fact, one of our listeners asked the question, to what degree is this genetic? And the answer is for personality disorders, such as narcissistic personality disorder, and borderline personality disorder, which we'll get to in a little bit,

there is definitely a genetic component. There's definitely a nurture and nature component to it. Right. In families like this, it's not just the emotional component that's allowing this to repeat through the generations. It's also probably some genetic biological component that's being passed down that has to do with temperament and personality and things that are a little more enduring. One thing I want to mention too that I didn't mention last week that I think is important is there's a brilliant, British psychoanalyst by the name of D.W. Winnicott, who wrote a lot about children. He talked about the idea of a good enough parent. And the idea of a good enough parent is that a parent does not have to perfectly meet the needs of the children to have healthy, high-functioning kids. A parent simply needs

to be good enough. In other words, there's a lot of room for error. So I don't want you guys to think that this is about perfection and this is about tending to every single little needs. of the child, it's not. What I'm talking about here is something much more extreme. What I talked about last week with the idea of a narcissistic family is we're looking at an outlier. We're looking at something that's extreme. We're looking at very extreme beliefs, religious beliefs. We're looking at extreme political views in terms of abolishing the IRS. We're looking at something that's atypical. Hopefully, you know, most of us, Lauren, myself included, we hopefully, or we try to be good enough parents.

And so we recognize that if we get out on the extremes, that that could be a problem. And the Cox family is out on those extremes a lot without recognizing it. And for future reference, when we talk about their religious beliefs or their political beliefs, we're always talking about extremes.

And this brings us into the heart of our topic today, which is how does one move from a false self into a personality disorder? And the answer to that is in the absence of an authentic self, which would be the opposite of the false self, or a true self as we sometimes call it, in the absence of a true authentic self will fill the void oftentimes with extreme behaviors. Are these the extreme behaviors that would translate into somebody being diagnosed with, like, say, a personality disorder? Yeah, that's a question that so many people have been asking me, what is Lori's diagnosis? or does Lori have a personality disorder?

And I mentioned last time that I'm trying to stay away from diagnosing because it's a bit of a taboo subject with psychologists and psychiatrists because there's something called the Goldwater Rule, which was adopted in 1973 by the American Psychiatric Association, which essentially says, in order for a psychologist or psychiatrist to diagnose, we need to do an in-depth interview and maybe some testing. Typically, the ethical thing to do is to have sufficient information on someone to provide the appropriate diagnosis.

In this world, though, 1973 was a long time ago. Before reality television. And before doxing. Before doxing, before live videos on social media. Right. You know, nowadays, we have access to. such tremendous information that a lot of people have moved away from this rule and feel much more comfortable providing diagnoses. Fortunately, in our case, I have in the psychosexual evaluation

that was performed in 2007 on Joe Ryan. That would be Lori Vallow's ex-husband, Tiley Ryan's father, who is now deceased. He died in 2018. In this evaluation, the evaluator says of Lori who she interviewed, she says to rule out histrionic and borderline issues. Now, she's not exactly diagnosing, but she's getting us close enough that I can run with that. She's speculating that Lori has either histrionic or borderline or some sort of. Right. She's saying that she probably has one or the other of these diagnoses, and if she doesn't, you need to rule it out. In other words, she's ruling it in. she's asking another mental health professional to rule it out. So as another mental health professional

looking at this report and observing Lori's behaviors, I am not going to rule those out. In fact, I'm going to piggyback on these diagnoses. I'm going to concur with the evaluator whose name out of respect I won't mention, but I'm going to concur that I believe this is a very accurate interpretation of Lori's situation that I think histrionic and or borderline personality disorder are probably, well, and narcissistic personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder are probably all pretty close in terms of providing an accurate diagnosis. And as I explained last week, each one of these diagnoses falls into cluster B in the diagnostic and statistical manual. So there's a lot of overlap between them. In fact, I want to read our,

I want to read you guys a page from the DSM, as we call it, that has to do with personality disorders so that we're clear about this. And because I know that some mental health professionals out there listening to this might give me some a little bit of pushback here. This is on page 666. Think about the irony of that. Yeah. Even the DSM is in on this. 666 pertaining to Lori Vallow, DeBelle, who Melanie Gibb called Corahor, which is the, the Mormon term for the devil on page 666, here it is.

If an individual has personality features that meet criteria for one or more personality disorders, in addition to borderline personality disorder, all can be diagnosed. So there you have it. We can say, according to the DSM, that Lori, who by the way meets almost all the conditions of histrionic personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder. and maybe to a lesser degree, antisocial personality disorder, simply because I don't know her adolescent history, and I would have to know that to diagnose.

But I can fairly say that she might meet most of the diagnoses for every personality disorder in Cluster B. If you ask me to pick one that fits the best. Oh, we're asking. We're asking. Keep going. If you ask me to pick one that fits the best, I would definitely have to land on borderline personality disorder.

Okay. The reason I would land on that is because that is the personality disorder that is the most extreme in terms of behaviors that push the envelope, behaviors that would be perceived as out of control, behaviors that are manipulative, that change on a dime. There's a tendency to over-idealize someone and then to devalue them quickly. There's a tendency to shift moods very quickly. there's a tendency towards rage and anger. I would have to say... And impulsivity, right? Impulsivity, yeah, we'll be talking about all of these.

I think a borderline personality disorder as a disorder of extremes. It's what I would call the over-the-edge personality disorder. It's the disorder that takes you to the edge and pushes you over because when you're interacting with a borderline, it often feels like you're groundless. It often feels like you've just been pushed off a cliff. Well, that's interesting. You said that Lori once told a friend that she thought about pushing her children off of a cliff because the end of the world was coming. Didn't she want to drive a car off the edge of the cliff?

Yeah, it was a car. It was a car. Right. So she wasn't going to push them. She was actually going to apparently ride with them. Turned out that she just pushed them. At the time, she was thoughtful enough to consider taking her own life, I guess. Right. And that, by the way, is another element, common element of borderline personality disorder, that there tends to be some history of suicide. ideation or suicidal tendencies and in some cases homicidal ideation oftentimes suicidal and homicidal ideation will go together they're sort of different sides of the same coin as you were saying that one of the characteristics is you idealize someone and then quickly devalue them does that mean that there's a

chance that she could go to devaluing chat here and turn against him absolutely it's something to keep an eye on, I think that if Lori comes to the realization that this is going to end badly for her and her only way out is to turn on Chad, I definitely think you might see that in the trial. A lot of times people speculating on this case are asking, and I've joined with them in asking, so who's going to turn on who? Do you think it's more likely Lori turning on Chad because of that? I think it's equally likely. We'll have to wait and see. I think in the end they're both going to act out of self-interest.

Borderline personality disorder people are probably more apt to shift their opinion quickly. So I think you probably would see Lori coming out swinging a lot faster than Chad based on this interpretation. We'll see. Let's talk about some of the extremes that we see in Lori. One is religious beliefs, obviously. We know that she's deeply invested in the cult. Even in this evaluation in 2007, the evaluator expresses a lot of concerns about her religious beliefs. Yeah, it's really funny how this evaluator does it too.

It's like they're tiptoning around. Well, she's Mormon, so maybe this is normal, but I don't think it is. The evaluator says in this report that Lori's belief system is riddled with ghosts and seemingly fanatical religious dogma. Her belief that Mr. Terry, I don't know who that is. An attorney, perhaps? Her belief that Mr. Terry visits her at night borders on visual and auditory hallucinations. There's also, in addition to all the belief she has around. the cult. At the time, she also believed that Tiley was the reincarnation of her deceased sister,

Stacey. Melanie's mother. So this is interesting because we do talk a lot about how Chad filled her mind with these delusions, yet she had some pretty fanatical beliefs before even meeting Chad. Right. These are not normal Mormon or LDS beliefs that they're talking about here. And these beliefs come from the Cox family. You think? Absolutely. I believe that these fanatical beliefs were developed in the family. Given Barry's extreme dislike of the IRS and given Barry's extreme views, I feel pretty confident that this is a family who already had some pretty wacky beliefs. And he was possibly schizophrenic too. Well, in the custody paperwork, Steve Cope said that Stacey, the oldest daughter, had told him that he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. So that would probably explain some peculiar

beliefs. So what are some of the other extremes with Lori? You mentioned that she was just a ton of extremes. She's been married five times. That's pretty extreme. True. I've only got two under my belt. This show is supported by Odu. When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up, and it gets complicated and confusing. Odu solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. Odu is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable. way. You can save money without missing out on features you need. Check out Odu at O-D-O-O-O-O- dot com. That's O-D-O-O-O-O-com. I'm not content perceiving herself as attractive. She had to see herself as extremely attractive. So she enters a beauty pageant or beauty pageants to showcase her beauty. Right. So she wasn't just content on feeling attractive. She had to prove herself to be the best. Right, the most beautiful.

And again, this would be related to the idea of a false self too, that she's seeking validation for her beauty. She's not content for how she looks in and of itself. She's got to enter a beauty pageant to have others reflect back to her beauty rather than simply accepting it for herself. We also see extremes in terms of her emotions that when she was driving with Charles,

she was trying to take his hand off the steering wheel so the car would crash. She goes from rage to extreme compliance. We see that in the recorded phone call with Melanie and chat as well. In fact, here's her going from an extreme, I love you, to anger against Melanie. What's one financial lesson you learned the hard way? I'll go first. It's not too late to start saving.

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Check out the Honda Ridgeline, Pilot, or CRB. For a limited time, well-qualified buyers can get a 3.9% APR on a 2025 pilot or a 2.9% APR on a 2025 Ridgeline or CRV. See dealer for financing details. Because I actually do care, I'm sharing what I feel for you because I know your salvation's in trouble for what you've done. If my salvation is not in trouble at all, I think you should check that with never. And I am concerned for you. That is what somebody does when they care. You don't sound like you're concerned.

You sound like your accusatory. You do not sound concerned. You sound pissed off. Any other extreme behaviors? Yeah, I think another area that people have been speculating a lot about has been in the sexual arena. A lot of people have asked me, do you think Lori was sexually abused? I think it's a great question. I think there's definitely some extreme behaviors.

At the very least, there's a lack of sexual boundaries. If I can revisit for a moment all the areas that we know of that are. documented about sexual problems in this family. It seems to add up. This definitely seems to confirm the old adage that when there's a lot of smoke, there's most likely fire. Yeah, there's a lot of smoke here. And speaking of that smoke, it looks like you have a list of bullet points there. Let's hear what those are. Let's run through some of the poor sexual boundaries that seem to surround Lori. Let's start with one of the most obvious ones. She was cheating on Charles with chat. So there was infidelity, which in her world was a big deal.

In a Mormon world, that's a huge deal. That is something you can get excommunicated for if there is infidelity or cheating on a spouse. You could actually lose your membership in this church she claims to be devoted to. So let's start with that. That's a huge one. And Melanie Gibb in her call actually calls Lori out on that. Like you being with Chad before he's even divorced is unusual behavior for a person that seems Christ. I was with him and he was never divorced.

Honey, I've seen you guys together. Oh, so I haven't ever seen you with, I've never seen you with Chad kiss him and walk around the tribe at BYU with him. I never saw that. Here's some other areas where sexual boundaries seem to be very poor. We know that Lori sent Chad when she was married to Charles, provocative. I don't know if she was naked, but she sent provocative videos that was in the, 48 hours segment. We know that Alex Cox took trips to South America for what I would call sex junkets with

Latino women. We know that he did this on multiple occasions. Alex being Lori's brother again. We know from one of the court documents filed by Cheryl Wheeler, who was Charles Vowell's ex-wife, that Charles and Lori would have sex in front of Colby when he was a child. We know that Lori for years was saying that Colby was being. being sexually abused by Joe Ryan. Colby and Tiley.

In Cheryl Wheeler's court report, she mentions that her children claim that Colby was sexually abusing them. Not only that there was sexual abuse, but that no adult in the Vallow House seemed to be too concerned about it. We know that Colby and the stepchildren in the Vallow household apparently had provocative pictures of Tiley, who was four years old on their phone. We know that Lori made a sexually provocative comment to the police officer. after Charles took her purse.

And she arrived at the police station to manipulate, as she always does so well, the situation. This is body cam footage of Lori being very flirtatious with police officers. At one point in the video, the police body cam is silenced, which means that they don't want the public to hear something. And during this, there's a lot of laughter, there's a lot of flirting, Tiley mentions, knock, knock jokes, and then Lori takes over. and says something that makes the police officer very uncomfortable. It's hard to hear if you don't have the visual,

but it's been noted by a lot of people that Lori made an uncomfortable and sexual joke towards the police officer. Okay. Got any knock-knock jokes? He dances really nice. Oh, good. Okay. Here we go.

Did you guys catch the sexual innuendo at the end before the awkward laughs? Here it is again. Here we go. She makes that comment, by the way, in front of Tiley, without any worry or care. I'll have a link to that body cam footage on our Facebook page if you want to see the entire video. We know that one or several of the stepson's was residing in Tiley's room when she was four years old. We know that there was masturbation going on. Here's the Guardian ad litem's assessment of that situation.

Ms. Vallow has now reported to the court and the child protective authorities that her stepson was recently in Tiley's bedroom after she went to sleep and that the boy was masturbating. According to the report of Cheryl Wheeler, the boy's mother, both Miss Vallow and Mr. Vell, said to her on the telephone that they knew the child was in Tiley's room. In other words, that it was known and that was supposedly okay by Lori? Is that what it's saying? Yeah. Wow. He goes on. The guardian ablyding goes on. He says it is difficult to understand how. Miss Valo could have allowed Tiley to be alone with a 12-year-old boy after dark while she was in bed asleep. Especially if you're claiming your little girl had already been sexually abused,

wouldn't you be doing everything in your power to keep her safe? We know that Lori had begun a relationship with Chad, that Charles Valo had returned to Texas, and that she flew to Texas to visit him. To visit Charles. Presumably having sex with him so that the insurance money would be reinstated in her name. So in other words, she uses it as a manipulative ploy. Right.

She's indifferent to the fact that she can use sex to get her needs met. What else do we know? We know that Barry Cox or his father solicited a prostitute at least once, which if you've solicited a prostitute once and you're caught, you're probably doing it regularly. Yeah. How many times was he not caught? We know that the evaluator in the 2007 report was concerned enough about the lack of boundaries in the home to recommend a psychosexual evaluation for both.

Lori and Colby, these are all behaviors that have been documented. Imagine what we don't know. Imagine the secrets in this family, right? That's another part of an Amesh family that I talked about last week is the lack of boundaries everywhere. But in this case, obviously, there's a huge lack of sexual boundaries. There's an old adage in the mental health field. We're only as sane or sick as the secrets we keep.

And you have to wonder how many secrets there are here. There's got to be so many secrets in this family. It's hard to imagine. For generations, it seems. Probably generations, absolutely. And so the Guardian ad lighting concludes with this comment. The continuing chaos and sexuality at the Valo home, along with the noncompliance of Ms. Vallow and the treatment plan, constitute an emergency.

And the courts should issue orders instantly removing Tiley from Ms. Vallow's home. Wow. Who wrote that? It's the guardian ad litem that was in charge of. recommendations of the court about Tiley. I don't know why Tiley remained in the home. But let me quote that again. The recommendation is around chaos, the continuing chaos and sexuality. So let's speculate on this for a minute. Let's go back to this idea of sexual abuse that people keep asking about. A couple years ago, I was hired by a defense attorney to solicited opinion

on the case about whether there was sexual abuse. And the reason I was asked to do that is because the DA told the attorney that if there was a strong probability of sexual abuse, then the sentence would be reduced because they believed that the inmate in this case could be rehabilitated. Whereas if there was not sexual abuse, oddly enough, they would see it as more enduring sexual deviancy. The DA actually felt that if in this particular case the inmate, the perpetrator, was also a victim, that they were willing to be a little more lenient with the sentence. And so the inmate's mother had claimed that he was repeatedly sexually abused by his father as a young child. And he had made several statements as a young child describing the sexual abuse.

But when I went in to evaluate him as an adult, he adamantly denied any sexual abuse occurring as a child. He was certainly old enough. He would have been around five, six, seven years old, the abuse took place. He was definitely old enough to remember any type of sexual abuse, but he denied it. The father of the perpetrator

was later arrested and charged with the possession of child pornography. That child pornography happened to depict children around the ages of five to eight. The mother was so concerned about it, she circumvented the court system because she was so concerned that the abuse would continue.

However, in my evaluation, Without getting a direct disclosure from the perpetrator in this case about sexual abuse, I had to rely on third-party sources, and in particular my knowledge of the history of the father and his use of child pornography. He didn't have a lot of significant relationships. That would be also an indicator of probably pedophilic interests. There were some other things going on. But my conclusion here was that there probably was abuse.

there probably was sexual abuse because if a sex offender is viewing child pornography, the probability of pedophilic interest is extremely high. In other words, it's very rare for someone to watch child pornography without having a sexual attraction to children. The obvious conclusion was that there probably was sexual abuse because of the father's interest in child pornography. And statements that the perpetrator made as a young child that he later denied as an adult. So why would the child be...

The child then not share that there was sexual abuse with a person that they could share that with? For the very same reasons that Lori would deny sexual abuse in her family, because the family's amashed, because the family is a very close system, because the family does not want to show its secrets to the outside world, that there was a certain loyalty. Even though this child, this young boy, was probably sexually abused by his father, he remained loyal to his family and his father, and he didn't want the secret to get out

because then his father would get in serious trouble or more trouble than he was already in. So he was protecting the family. He was protecting the secrets in the family. And that brings us back to the Cox family. Was there sexual abuse in this family? There's no direct evidence. I don't have a direct link because nobody's disclosed it.

But like this case I just talked about, I think there's enough evidence here of all these sexual boundary violations to think that Lori probably was, sexually abused. But there's another way to approach this as well, and that is to look at the research of incestuous families. There's not a huge amount of research here, but there's enough to give us some indicators of whether sexual abuse occurred. One interesting study from 1980 by Dietz and Kraft found that incestuous families often had patriarchal and authoritarian fathers

who lacked affection towards their children. The mothers typically were passive, depressed, and distant. This could sound familiar. Smith and Israel in 1987 looked at families where there was sibling sexual abuse occurring. They found that parental physical and emotional absence among the parents was the biggest predictor of siblings acting out sexually. So while we may look at all of the sexual boundary violations in the Cox family, and we can make certain inferences based on that about sexual abuse transpiring, we can also approach this. from another angle, which is a top-down approach, where we examine the research and see if it fits.

And in this case, many of the initial studies on sexual abuse conducted in the 80s and 90s seemed to fit the Cox family very well. It could have been her father. It could have been Alex. It could have been anyone in this family. It could have been a relative. I don't know. But I do know that this is a very dysfunctional family.

It's a family that's extremely amashed. It's a family that will protect its secrets at all costs. To answer the question that so many of you have asked, I do think that there's a high probability, although I can't prove it with certainty, that there probably was some type of sexual abuse here. I wouldn't be surprised to see this secret come out in the trial in some way if the defense attorney believes it can benefit Lori in some way. Okay.

How does this change our analysis of Lori and borderline personality? Well, it strengthens it. It strengthens it because trauma is often a very common element of borderline personality disorder. As in it's caused by trauma. I wouldn't say it's caused by trauma. I would say that trauma can be a major component of borderline personality disorder. And the sense that if you have a family that's narcissistic,

like we discussed last week, if you have a narcissistic family where the false self develops from that, and then during those critical developmental periods, you have trauma. You throw in trauma into the mix. Then the self becomes more enraged. Okay.

Then you're taking a bad situation and you're making it worse. You're amplifying it. Throwing fuel on the fire. Right, exactly. And so you have, in this case, if there is sexual trauma, you're opening Pandora's box. You have a child who's not getting enough attention, a child who's not being validated. And now whatever little sense of trust there is in this family, you're betraying that.

You're absolutely stomping on this child's will. Whatever this child is trying to protect of itself or in its developing personality, now you're quashing that. Sexual abuse is the ultimate betrayal. It's the people that are supposed to care for you the most. They're abusing you for their own satisfaction. They're treating you like an object. The family that's supposed to nurture you. And protect you.

And protect you and provide for you is now treating you like an instrument of their sexual desires. And what do we know about some of the research on the relationship between sexual abuse and borderline personality disorder? One fascinating study by Weaver and Clum in 1993 did not have a huge sample, but it was sufficient to draw some reasonable conclusions. The authors found that the only predictive variable among several variables that predicted borderline personality was a history of sexual abuse as a child. They looked at physical abuse. They looked at family violence. They looked at dysfunctional family patterns. They even looked at attachment.

And what they found was sexual abuse was the one very very. among all of those other variables that predicted borderline personality disorder. We also know from a summary of research by Wolf and Alpert in 1991 that sexual abuse leads to poor boundaries in all areas of life, impaired personality development, and to use their term, a damaged self, which is consistent with my idea of a false self. So I think this is another study which shows some relationship between sexual trauma as a child and later personality disorders. And that, by the way, is why sex crimes are punished so harshly, because the emotional scars from sex crimes runs so deep. It's not just the sexual acts, of course,

that create the trauma from sex crimes. It's the ultimate betrayal in any family to use a child sexually for the adult's pleasure. It's one of those scenarios where the scars are immense and the children will suffer throughout their entire lives often, especially if they don't get health because they'll struggle to develop close relationships. Most sexual abuse children, they'll struggle with intimacy. And we see that with Lori, obviously. She's been married five times. She's been in crazy relationships. She's had an unstable relationship history. That's one of the hallmarks of borderline personality disorder. Another is the instability of herself. That's, again, that's the false self. There's just all these extreme behaviors going on.

This is going to seem like an abrupt transition from what we were just talking about. It is now a few days later. I have finished editing this episode only to learn how long our dinner was. So we're going to split this episode, the mini extremes of Lori Valladabelle into two parts. If this feels unfinished, that's because it is. This dinner went on for another hour. We'll let you guys chew over this first part a little bit and digest it before we present our next part. And if you're curious, here's the next question I ask. It will be the beginning of part two. So it's one thing to have borderline personality disorder.

In fact, John knows I have a good friend who is aware that she has borderline personality disorder and goes to therapy and works on it. But how does this lead to murder? There are a lot of people with borderline personality disorder out there that wouldn't murder somebody. That question will begin part two. Before we end, we want to bring up what day it is. today. It is September 8th. It's been officially a year now since the last known sighting of 16-year-old

Tyley Ryan. Tiley Ryan was seen in photographs with her family in Yellowstone National Park. And in these photos, she was holding on to her little brother, JJ, who we have heard by all accounts that she adored this little boy. And she appeared to be protecting her little brother fiercely in this photo. I think there's this sense that Tiley needed to move to Rexburg to be near JJ. There's almost this desperation that Tiley is clinging to JJ often, that she stays near him, that she's almost trying to protect him. Yes, and that is what we have heard from some people actually close to the case and close to the family that Tiley could have stayed in Arizona.

She was 16 years old. She didn't know anyone in Rexburg, Idaho. She was moving for JJ. We know that Tiley was a victim of homicide in this crazy cult situation, but I suspect there were deeper levels of victimization with Tiley in the family. There may have been other types of abuse present. I don't want to speculate exactly on what those were, but it seems quite probable that as long as we're talking about abuse in this episode,

that I want to acknowledge some of the painful experiences that I'm sure Tiley endured, in addition, of course, to the ultimate betrayal of losing her life. We would like to dedicate the first part of this episode to Tiley and to all other victims of abuse. Before we close, I'd like to tell a quick story about a case I was involved with over a decade ago. I was working with a little four-year-old boy and his mother had claimed repeatedly

that he was being sexually abused by his father. After some extensive work with this little boy, I started to question that. The mother in this case was, I came to learn, a borderline personality disorder. It appeared to me quite clearly that she had coached this little boy. And even though he was four, he was able to describe some abuse, but not consistently because of his age. The father, who was being accused of abuse, his defense team actually brought me on to try to

defend him. It was a bit uncomfortable because my client was the mother, but I had to go. by what I believed was true and accurate. And in this case, it really did seem quite clear that the boy was being coached. This situation reminds me a great deal of what went on in the Valo household. I don't know for sure who was coaching who or who was telling who to say what about whom. It's in a mesh family. It's a family with no boundaries.

It's a family with numerous secrets. But I do know this. I do know that the little boy I was working with was deeply harmed by the entire situation. I do know that the little boy struggled more with the false allegations than he did with any traumas that were occurring in the house. And I think I tell this story because I like to end our episodes with an aspiration. My aspiration here would be for Tiley and for all young children who are helpless and at the whims of their parents to have the ability to flourish without parents projecting and interjecting their own pathology onto those kids.

My aspiration would be for all of us to try to see our children for who they are. I know I talked about this last week, but it's very important to me to reiterate this point. For us as parents to try to see our children for the innocent, sweet, struggling at times children that they are who simply want to be themselves in the world. We should try to see our children for who they are and not for who we want them to be. Because of the date, Tiley Ryan's aunt, Annie Cushing, wrote a tribute to Tiley on social media.

And I responded, and I want to read to you what I wrote, my own tribute to Tiley. Tiley has stolen my heart. I wish I had known her. I wish I could have talked about her future with her like you did, Annie, as she hung onto every word you said and for that moment felt cared for and understood. There is something about her that draws me in, the girl I would have wanted to be friends with in high school, to laugh with and talk about boys, make funny videos, and march to the beat of our

own drum. She was deprived of those years. Instead of prom, Tiley was protecting JJ. Instead of close friends, she was isolated and moving place to place. Instead of feeling any sense of safety, She had nowhere to turn. Nowhere. Both her fathers were dead, and not even her mom's god-fearing friends were a place of refuge. Instead, they plotted her demise. I've always said, Tiley was smart. She was smarter than her mom and her mom's little cult.

Tiley was a child of trauma coming from generations of enmeshment and toxicity, but I believe she would have made it through. She was going to break the cycle, and I think that Lori knew. Lori was threatened by her smarts and determination. Lori knew what Tiley was capable of, a beautiful future free from her mom. That's what makes me the most heartbroken. As you, Annie, and Tiley sat there on your last visit with her, discussing her skills, her dreams and talents, rather than Tiley's mother take interest, Lori was most likely thinking about

how she could rid herself of this threat. Her daughter was a threat. Tiley was this thing in Lori's life that was becoming complicated, and so, you she simply decided to take this girl's beautiful future away. Rest in peace, Tiley. May your dad, Joe, wrap you in his arms and give you the love you always deserved. I wish so much this army that has formed in yours and JJ's name could have protected you. Instead, we're an army who will fight for your justice until the very end.

And so this episode is dedicated to Tiley Ryan. May justice be served. We will be bringing part two to you shortly. rest of this dinner. Until then, we hope that you will continue to share this podcast with your friends and know we always have a seat waiting for you at our dinner table. Thank you and good night. Ladies and gentlemen, we are now boarding group A. Please have your boarding passes ready to scan. If your phone is cracked, old, or was chewed up by your Chihuahua travel companion, please refrain from holding up the line. Instead, go to Verizon and trade in any phone in any condition from one of

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